Business plan tells a very special story. It is the story of a unique business enterprise, the one you, the entrepreneur, will create. Telling this story will reveal how knowledgeable and competent you are, how certain the outcome is, and how desirable it is to proceed with the project.

There are similarities among all good business plans, but no two are exactly alike, because no two businesses are exactly alike, even if they make and sell same thing to the same market, two businesses will have different personalities. The behavior and attitudes of the managers will be reflected in the businesses. Even the décor will be different, just as the homes of the managers will reflect their individual taste and style. Each business plan is unique.

Several topics that deserve consideration in the plan: what, how, where, and when. You would expect to see topic headings like the following:

The Product. What product or service is being offered? How is it made ready for sale?

Target market. Who will part with their money? How many of them are there? Where are they?

Competition. Where do the customers obtain the product or service now? How does that product or service differ from yours? How strong is the competition?

Marketing. How will the customers learn about your product? Where can they buy it? How does it get to where they buy it?

Management. Who will coordinate the activities of production, administration, and marketing? Who will decide what is to be done and when?

Financial Performance? How much profit will be made and when? How much capital is required? What will the business’s net worth be a year from now? Two years from now?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Order cost includes all incremental costs associated with placing or receiving an extra order that are incurred regardless of the size of the order. Components of order cost include:

Buyer time: Buyer time is the incremental time of the buyer placing the extra order. This cost should be included only if the buyer is utilized fully. The incremental cost of getting an idle buyer to place an order is zero and does not add to the order cost. Electronic ordering can significantly reduce the buyer time to place an order by making order placement simpler and in some cases automatic.

Transportation costs: A fixed transportation cost is often incurred regardless of the size of the order.

Receiving costs: Some receiving costs are incurred regardless of the size of order. They include any administration work such as purchase order matching and any effort associated with updating inventory records. Receiving costs that are volume dependent should not be included.

Other costs: Each situation can have costs unique to it that should be considered if they are incurred for each order regardless of the quantity of that order.

The order cost is estimated as the sum of all its component costs. The order cost is often a step function; it is zero when the resource is not fully utilized, but takes on a large value when the resource is fully utilized. At that point the order cost is the cost of the additional resource required.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Star Performers are people with the right combination of skills. Four categories of potential star performers can be highlighted:

Highly trained specialists – found in large numbers in high technology industries such as computing or those with intensive research and development such as pharmaceuticals. In the case of retailing, finance, distribution and administration are highlighted specialist areas.

Good managers and leaders – such as retail group managers.

Sales and marketing people – who are able to acquire business.

Hybrids – individuals with the potential to cross over from a specialism, such as human resources, into general management.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

A common difficulty for entrepreneurs during the growth of their business is expanding into another distinctive business function. When we read or hear about outstanding entrepreneurs we see the exponential portion of their record. The long, slow foundation building is not interesting to the investment community or the media. But the truth is there was a long period of solid building within one distinctive business function.

A new business or a young business can barely support the management, administration, and marketing it has to have to operate in one distinctive function. Different business functions require different handling in each of these areas. This imposes an additional nonproductive burden on an already overburdened revenue-generating segment of the business.

Successful entrepreneurs start the smallest possible viable business concept and concentrate on it until it works very well. They get to know more and more about their little business until they know more about it than anyone else. They become the expert about their business.

When discussing the entrepreneur’s career path they perceive growth opportunities. At this point it is very easy for them to conclude that having made this business work they can make any business work. They frequently see green pastures on the other side of the fence. The successful entrepreneurs develop and refine a business concept for the growth they will undertake. They then expand their little business. They don’t leap after someone else’s headaches. They build on their own experience and expertise.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Lectures, Line of Sight

The administration and management of Sales territories presents a tremendous challenge, even to the most experienced sales managers. While you would like to have your salespeople feel that territory administration is done fairly and reasonably, the truth of the matter is that it is usually more of an art than a service. A geographic information system allows a salesperson or sales manager to view and manipulate customer and/or prospect information on an electronic map. Customer information can be accessed directly from contact management data. Information on potential prospects can be entered into the system directly as it is captured, or the information can be purchased in bulk in computer format from third party sources.

Once the information is plotted on a map, the administration of territories becomes immeasurably more accurate. The information can also be manipulated much more easily. In addition, this type of visual representation will often reveal buying patterns or trends that would not otherwise be apparent.

Salespeople can use geographic information systems in planning their sales calls to make the most efficient use of their time. Drive time is minimized when sales call planning is done with geographic considerations in mind.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

The most basic and common feature of reengineered processes is the absence of an assembly line; that is, many formerely distinct jobs or tasks are integrated and composed into one. The payoffs of integrated processes, case workers, and case teams can be enormous. Eliminating handoffs means doing away with the errors, delays, and rework that they engender. Typically, a case worker-based process operates ten times faster than the assembly line version that it replaces. Moreover, because the new process generates fewer errors and misunderstandings, the company doesn’t need additional people to find and fix them.

Integrated processes also have reduced process administration overheads. Because employees involved in the process assume responsibility for making sure that customer’s requirements are met on time and with no defects, they need less supervision. Instead, the company encourages these empowered employees to find innovative and creative ways to reduce cycle time and cost continually while producing a defect-free product or service. Improved control is another benefit of integrated processes; because they involve fewer people, assigning responsibility for them and monitoring performance is easier.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

In this era of modernization in many aspects of public administration, most developing countries continue to follow century-old concepts and structures. They seriously need structural adjustment thereby launching legislative and administrative reforms, which stress a reconsideration of the role of the public administration in the conditions of democratization and market-economy. A greater emphasis needs to be placed on effectiveness of the public administration. The practice and legislation of such countries should affect patterns of the role of public sector and influence fundamental features of the system of governance. A common goal should be to introduce a more contractual, participative, discretionary style of relationship: between different levels and agencies in administrative apparatus; between the decision-making authorities and operating units; and between administrative agencies and producing units, public or private.

A major reform objective in public sector management should be to increase, within the framework of democratic accountability, cost effectiveness in the public provision of goods and services. Both citizens and public administration accept the need for improved quality in the public sector.

They need to hold high the aim of structuring an effective mechanism for achieving policy objectives, determined at central, provincial and local levels for increasing efficiency, effectiveness and accountability in providing public services.

The legality and the efficiency of providing such public services are of great concern. Local authorities are empowered to do something that is intended to assist the carrying out any role.

Outsourcing is a way of contracting out one or more functions to specialist companies. This allows the public entity to concentrate on its core activities. There are three primary reasons for the public administration to outsource. The first is to achieve cost-effective provision of services. The second is to provide a choice for the citizens of producing and supplying public services of different qualities and kinds. The third is simply because there is no alternative due to a lack of staff with the requisite skills; need of relaxing the administrative burden, which somebody other could deal with even better and concentrating the attention on the core administrative matters; short deadlines for implementation. This last reason for outsourcing is to meet the needs, which exceed the capability of the public administration staff, because of a shortage of either staff or skills, or which give added flexibility to the administrative organization.

Thus, the outsourcing can be seen as a process through which relationships are managed and adjusted according to arrangements specified and conditions planned by the administrative authority in the contract documentation. The focus here is not on the legal issues of the contract rather than on the quality of contracting as a mechanism for achieving policy objectives determined at all levels of government for increasing efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. From this perspective the outsourcing by public administration can be considered as a joint commitment to partnership between public and private sector operating as a co-operative device for providing public goods and services.

The trend towards greater satisfaction of public needs and consumer empowerment underlies the role of outsourcing by public administration. The outsourcing is encouraged to secure higher quality of public works and services, whereby contracting managers are located closer to the consumer and so are better able to respond to their needs in actual delivery. The role of consumers and end-clients with respect to outsourcing can thus be increased. The strategies of improving responsiveness through outsourcing on the one hand, and hierarchical distribution of the administrative functions on the other, can be combined in a successful model of public service delivery. The administrative authorities – at federal, provincial and local levels – might participate in the specification of services and in the determination of contractual standards and terms of agreement.

As part of administrative reform outsourcing by public administration should be a high priority. The corresponding legislation should be based on three main principles—transparency, non-discrimination involving open selection criteria and open standards, specifications and standards regulated by law; and open competition.

The framework agreements are significant for ensuring the execution of the administrative power intent of the outsourced functions. The federal, provincial or local governments can use outsourcing as a tool for providing public services when carrying out their functions. They use outsourcing to get public results, which should be achieved when the governments exercise their administrative powers.

The outsourcing in some way can replace the direct administrative action. Such outsourcing has the compulsory nature same as this of the executive action which it replaces. The administration can use administrative or seek lawmaking authority to bring about the result it desires, if it is nonetheless outsourcing. A realistic view is that the process of deciding to outsource as well as the very process of outsourcing is a valid exercise of administrative power. The offered and agreed terms of the contract are also exercising of the administrative power. Once the contract signed, however, the particular relationships issued by outsourcing are moved under the regulations of the private law.

The government functioning can be improved by redefining its role: Policy-making instead of operative decision-making. It should stimulate tools for establishment of working, efficient, rational and fair practice, design of efficient allocation of financial and administrative wherewithal; transparency and control. The government must also realize that developing a training strategy for skills and incentives is badly needed.

The overall proportion of outsourcing in the field of public administration is generally expected to growing. Demand will increase for a variety of reasons.

Successful outsourcing, however, presupposes the existence of an efficient market. In

Pakistan the market for some categories of public goods and services is deficient of professionalism, integrity, and fair play. Such situation is creating conditions for corruption.

From another side, outsourcing itself contributes to developing the market.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight